Instrument Access Date
0800 - 1600 ER-2 Support
0900 - Forecasting & Flight Planning Brief
Looking ahead (tentative)
7-18-21 ER2 Hard Down Day
0800 - Hangar access / No ER-2 support
7-19-21 Flight Day
Updates:
Today we concluded the first science flight out of Salina. After more than a year delay due to COVID-19 pandemic this felt as a very special day.
0500 – Hands-On
0500 – Forecasting & Flight Planning Meeting
0600 – Preflight Brief
0700 – Hands Off
0900 – Takeoff
1700 – Landing
1900 – ER-2 crew duty day ends
Looking ahead (tentative)
7-17-21 Instrument Access Day
0700 – Hangar Open
0800 – 1600 ER-2 Support
7-18-21 Hard Down Day
0700 – Hangar access / No ER-2 support
Updates – ER-2 and the instruments are preparing for the next day science flight
Instrument access day
0700 Hangar / Lab open
0700 - 1500 ER-2 crew support
0800 FFP pre-brief
0900 FFP briefing
Looking ahead
7-16-21 – Flight Day (times are subject to change)
0500 - Hands on
0900 - Takeoff
7-17-21 – Instrument access day
0700 - 1500 ER-2 crew support
Instrument access day
0700 - Lab Open
0700 - 1500 ER-2 Support
0700 - 0900 FFP meeting (online and in the flight ops room)
1300 - Preflight-day brief, in-person, in the lab (ground floor). One representative / instrument.
Looking ahead
7-15-21 -- Potential Flight Day (exact times and goals are TBD)
0330 - Open hangar
0400 - Instruments preflight
0600 - Instruments hands-off, ER-2 preflight prep
0800 - Takeoff for an 8h flight
7-16-21 -- Instrument access day
No flight day
0700 – Hangar open
0700 – 1500 ER-2 Crew available
Tomorrow instrument workday.
0800 Hangar 606 access
1000 ER-2 crew show up
1000 Ramp driving orientation
1200 ER-2 Take Off, transit to Salina
~1500 ER-2 Salina landing
ER-2 -- Hard down day.
0800 -- 1600 hangar access
Updates:
We were hard at work preparing the Salina site for this deployment.
Tomorrow, we expect the science equipment track to arrive and we are looking forward to the arrival of more team members.
You may see an unusual plane flying in and out of Salina over the next few weeks after Salina Regional Airport was chosen by NASA as the base for a research project.
The Dynamics and Chemistry of the Summer Stratosphere (DCOTSS) project began flights from Salina Regional Airport about two weeks ago and sees an aircraft travel upwards of 70,000 feet to look at strong thunderstorms in the stratosphere.
The project uses a NASA ER-2, a variant of the Lockheed U-2, equipped with 12 different scientific instruments to collect data in flight.
NASA recently began new research to investigate how extreme summer weather may be affecting the upper layers of earth's atmosphere.
